Passion (continued)

On Monday, my teammate and I ran twenty two long, slow, miles.  Before we started, I had high hopes that the GU we would ingest at miles eight and eighteen would provide some much needed support, but that didn't really pan out.  We were dog tired by the eleventh mile so you can imagine how the rest of the run went.  We continuously tried to talk about various subjects but within minutes it would get quiet and we'd just hear the shuffling.  At mile sixteen, I was spacing out and tripped on the sidewalk.  I managed to land on my palms and brush it off rather quickly but the mailman still stopped to make sure I was all right.  "All good" I said and waved, despite the fact that I really wanted to hop on the back of his truck and get a ride home.  We headed into our final loop and at mile eighteen I somehow managed to trip again; on a root this time.  That was awesome.  At that point, my teammate was starting to worry.  "Um...", she said, "maybe we should walk a bit" as she brushed off the leaves that were stuck to my shirt.  "No, let's just keep going and get this done" I said and we continued on.  Funny how I just mentioned how incredibly lucky I am to have running as a passion.  As we were tackling this run, I was kind of wondering why the hell I was so passionate about something so freakin' hard and often very painful.  Seriously, why do I choose to do this and what is driving this very bizarre passion of mine?  After three long hours, we finally finished and headed into town for coffee.  The next five minutes were so unbelievably rewarding.  In addition to sitting and relaxing and sipping a hard earned beverage, we realized, to our delight, that we had just successfully completed twenty two miles.  That, in and of itself, was HUGE.  We talked about how psyched we were to be in the home stretch of training and how nice it was that we had made it past another huge milestone.  We rejoiced that the next day would be a day to rest, a small but valuable gift to our bodies.  And then we'd be ready to run again and we would be fired up.  We didn't actually say this but I knew it and so did she.  In five short minutes I had answered my own question.

Listen to this:

Angela Surf City - The Walkmen